"'T is well said, Master Carver. I had some such thought myself," said Allerton rather primly, while Hopkins and Billington exchanged an irreverent grin, and Standish stroked his moustache.
The cloak was brought, and gracefully accepted by Samoset, who evidently regarded it as a ceremonial robe of state, designed to mark his admittance as an honored guest at the white men's board, and draping it toga-wise across his shoulder, he sat down to a plentiful repast of cold duck, biscuit, butter, cheese, and a kind of sausage called black pudding. To these solids was added a comfortable tankard of spirits and water, from which Samoset at once imbibed a protracted draught.
"Englishman have better drink than poor Indian," remarked he placing the tankard close beside his plate, and seizing a leg of the duck in his hands.
"'T is sure enough that he has been much with white men,—yes, and Englishmen, too, by the way he takes down his liquor," remarked Hopkins.
"Nay, methinks our Dutch brethren could take down a deep draught, too, and this is their own liquor," said Bradford, while Winslow muttered in Carver's ear,—
"Let not Alden leave the case-bottle within reach of the savage. Enough will loosen his tongue, but a little more will bind it."
"True," assented the Governor, nodding to Alden, who quietly replaced the bottle in the case whence he had taken it. Samoset followed it with longing eyes, but his own dignity prevented remonstrance except by finishing the flagon and ostentatiously turning it upside down.
After this, the meal was soon finished, and the conversation resumed, partly by signs and inference, partly by Samoset's limited stock of English. By one means and the other the Pilgrims presently learned that Monhegan was a large island near to the mainland in a northeasterly direction, and a great resort of fishing vessels, mostly English, with whose masters Samoset, as sachem of the Indians in those parts, had both traded and feasted, learning their language, their manners, and, what was worse, their habits of strong drink and profanity, neither of which however seemed to have taken any great hold upon him, being reserved rather as accomplishments and proofs that he too had studied men and manners.
The master of one of these fishing craft some few months previously had invited the sachem to accompany him across the bay to Cape Cod, where the sailor wished to traffic with the natives, and Samoset had since remained in this part of the country visiting Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags, who with a large party of his warriors was now lying in the forest outside of the settlement, waiting apparently for the result of Samoset's reconnoissance before he should determine on his own line of action.
Farther inquiry elicited the fact that the former inhabitants of Plymouth, or Patuxet, a people tributary to Massasoit, but living under their own sachem, had been totally exterminated by a plague, perhaps small-pox, which had swept over the country two or three years before the landing of the Pilgrims, leaving, so far as Samoset could tell, only one man alive; this man seeking refuge among the Nausets, the tribe to the east of Patuxet, was one of the victims entrapped by Hunt, escaping from whom, he lived a long time in England with a merchant of London named Slaney, who finally sent him in a fishing vessel to Newfoundland, whence he had made his way back to his friends on Cape Cod.